The Newberry Herald

The Old Year and the New.

1868, with its lights and shadows, its growth and decline; its attack and defense, its joys and sorrows, hasty greetings and abrupt farewells, has taken its march adown the deep, dark passage of the past and we have left of the days, the weeks and the months; but the remembrance of them.

Twelve months, fifty-two weeks, three hundred and sixty-five days! Might we not reduce the same to moments—precious key moments—for five of which, mortals are often willing to exchange earthly crowns?

Too much of time in which to have accomplished good—how much unfortunately in which to have done evil. What is the record to-day as, standing upon the threshold of the New Year, our minds are carried back through the year just closed? How few of us can feel that our records are clear. Alas, how few, "for we have left undone those things which we ought to have done." &c. But we do not intend to moralize; the past belongs to the dead past, and standing in the present, upon the threshold of another year, let us define our positions, and go forth from the twilight into the flood-light of the battle of life. If any of us have fallen into the slough of despond, let us arise therefrom. Have hopes long vanished and deferred made the heart sick? Are the burdens weighty? Does centrifugal action seem ready to disperse thought from the chambers of memory? Does the mental storm rage pitilessly upon the heart tendrils—is the ascent steep and the declivities rugged? Hope on, press forward. In poverty and grief thrown you upon the bitter waters of mara? Never despair. These are not phenomena. The best of men and causes often suffer the greatest trials and experience the sorest defeat. But is not success often dangerous—and are defeats not often more apparent than real? Well, then, if everything has happened—if the wreck has been complete—if fortune has gone, friends departed, and the heart, lonely and starved, keeps its vigils, while the star of hope struggles through gloom and darkness, drink ye in its bitter eloquence, and, gathering up the ashen leaves, press forward with Spartan courage to the Homeric strife before you. For the year that comes is fraught with mighty issues, and woes are uttered against those who are behind the age.

With the experience of the past twelve months, however, whether for good or evil, we can turn over a new leaf in our history and strive to keep clear the pages which may be written against us for the coming time.

In the characters of publishers and readers, we have jogged along through the months which are now gone, right pleasantly, and profitably it is hoped, and though "lost to sight", for the most time (only occasionally meeting on special high days and holidays) we are none of us the worse for that. The weekly visits of our representative, the Herald, have kept all the links in the chain unbroken, and to-day the same friendly relations exist between us as in the times past. Had we met oftener, or dwelt together in the flesh, perhaps it might not have been as unity; but better then that we have met in the spirit—not spirits—and that nothing has intervened or sprung up to break our harmony.

Heraldistically, then, we are all happy, though politically and socially the picture may be dark for some or all of us. We have endured sorrows, been buffeted, barked at, and have suffered many ills, and we take it for granted that none of you have been exempt from the trials which fall to the share of man, and therefore receiving your sympathy, we extend a full share of ours, with the earnest hope that the year 1869 may be full of the joys which satisfy, and that the sorrows which come to us may be tempered to our capacities. In the mean while let us hold our tempers in check. A happy new year, reader; may we sail together as pleasantly as we have heretofore done, and so find us, still fast in friendship.